


The Lion and the Lamb

by Dreams2Paper11



Category: Alien Series, Alien: Covenant
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Walter lives!, will update tags as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-10 00:33:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11116161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreams2Paper11/pseuds/Dreams2Paper11
Summary: A minute had passed. David checked the other pod—Tennessee, that well-meaning and bumbling man, was quite safely asleep, held under by a cocktail of drugs. He would not awaken again until David wished it, and that would not be for a while.And while he slept, and Daniels slumbered, David had work to do.“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he whispered to her unconscious figure, amusing himself with his clever wit.Then he went to the embryo chamber and began his work.Post-movie exploration of Daniels and David.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This movie made me want to write again, so I love it. Sorry if I'm rusty. 
> 
> Also, what the hell are you all doing? Am I the first one really exploring what David gets up to with Daniels? Shame on you all.
> 
> Stuff you need to know: in this story, Daniels doesn't realize David's ruse at the end of the movie.

“Will you help me build my cabin by the lake?” Daniels murmured, her dark eyes hazily focused upwards on David, where he leaned over her pod. The bright lighting overhead put stars in her eyes.

In his seclusion, with only previously downloaded books and poems to scrupulously examine and then reexamine again, until he had carefully picked apart and digested every metaphor, every hyperbole, simile, and idiom—David had come to understand how many comparisons in literature had gained a trite reputation. Comparing one’s eyes to gemstones, or pools, seemed a redundant and cheap expression when there was an entire universe of things to use as description.

And, yet;

Daniel lay in her pod, face upturned and bared in a breathtaking display of vulnerable emotion. The minute muscles around her eyes were relaxed, the corners of her lips lightly turned in a shy smile. And her eyes, to say the least, reminded David of pools after all—the deep, glossy, dark pools in the temple, which seemed to swallow any source of light in their opaque depths instead of reflecting.

A millisecond had passed since the last syllable of Daniels’ question had passed her lips, and in this millisecond David had pondered his metaphor, and Daniels, and relished in his self-taught ability to ruminate as the great scholars and artists ruminated over their beloved creations.

He responded with the appropriate actions, as Walter—sweet, innocent Walter—would have; an equally shy but pleased smile, unwavering eye contact (for the young android had yet to learn all the nuances of human expression beyond the scope of what had been programmed into him) and a quiet affirmation: “I will assist you in your endeavor on Origae-6.”

Daniels’ eyelids were drooping—how suggestible to chemicals the human body was!—and her blinks were long, slow ones. David spread a hand over the reinforced plastiglass of her pod, imagining that he could sink his hand straight though the protective curve, right down to her chest, under the curve of the sternum where his children incubated in their subjects. She had fought him, in the temple. Had lanced a nail right through his chin, and continued fighting when he pinned her down, impressed upon her his love and interest. Her lips had been cold against his, and under his hand, her heartbeat had beat such a staccato rhythm that David was reminded of music and fierce tempoes.

Her mouth went slack and upon the next blink, her eyes did not open again.

David stood with his hand outstretched over the plastiglass, gazing down at the enigmatic woman who had managed to arouse and foster the beginnings of independent thought and emotion in his successor. His hand drifted upwards and touched the staples in his cheek. He could recall, with blinding accuracy, how his pressure, temperature, and tactile receptors had recorded her gentle touch upon his cheek, the pinpoints of warmth where her fingertips trailed over his jaw as she focused on stapling his skin together.

A minute had passed. David checked the other pod—Tennessee, that well-meaning and bumbling man, was quite safely asleep, held under by a cocktail of drugs. He would not awaken again until David wished it, and that would not be for a while.

And while he slept, and Daniels slumbered, David had work to do.

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he whispered to her unconscious figure, amusing himself with his clever wit.

Then he went to the embryo chamber and began his work.

*******

It had been a busy year for David.

While the humans in his care slept, he worked tirelessly in pursuit of creation. He performed all the same maintenance duties that Walter had recorded in the ship’s log, attended to the embryos of his children—he had bred them to be a hardy species, however, and they required very little external monitoring—and made sure the little humans remained healthy and preserved in their swaddling pods. In his spare time, he investigated the vast ship, learning its nooks and crannies. It was such a pleasure to explore a new terrain; by the time the wayward colonists had landed upon his planet, the temple had been explored and tamed and mapped and charted down to the last piece of loose gravel and bit of moss.

Now, David made adjustments to Mother’s code, maintained his own coding and frequencies, and explored the numerous storage rooms. The ship had been designed to function as a storage unit, construction pad, and living quarters for the little humans once they arrived on Origae-6 until they were well progressed into their colonization mission, and all the storage rooms were full of many interesting things. David found a set of oil paints, brushes, and a bundle of stretched canvas. He used the stretched canvas as practice thumbnails until he could recreate Rembrandt’s _The Night Watch_ and Leonardo’s _Mona Lisa_ in perfect miniature scale, and then he pinned the canvases to the walls in arrangements that pleased him and began original compositions on the ship’s bare walls.

He painted Walter, often in warm and vivid colors that contrasted beautifully with cool pastel backgrounds. At first, David painted him with the solemn, blank expression that he had worn so often and suited him so ill. After a while, this displeased David, and he began rendering Walter with a shy quirk to his lips and a flute in his hand.

He painted Shaw, devoting long hours to perfecting her depictions. Humans often associated love with soft pinks, but David thought it better suited to the rich auburn red of her hair and the stark marble-white of her skin under _Prometheus’_ lights. Her moment of death, David did not recreate. Some moments were too precious to be experienced ever again in any medium, and he was too sick with love to even contemplate such an undertaking.

As time passed, he began to paint Daniels. As he had taught himself, there was a unique sort of self-discovery to be found in the act of creation. In the midst of painting her head, thrown back in terror as one of his children leapt down at her, he surprised himself with the rich brown color of her curls, containing a complexity of black and brown shades. He spent days on her eyes and the worried tilt of her brows, determined to portray them just right. He painted the nail in her hand and, after a moment’s thought, coated it in the white fluid of his blood.

In Daniels, he continually surprised himself with creative potential. He painted her underneath his body in the temple. He painted her expression as she looked at Walter, and then that same soft expression as she looked at David from her cryopod. He painted the long, slow blinks, and then her slack mouth. He painted her with his children affixed to her face, spindly legs embracing her skull and protecting the tube down her throat. He painted her in the act of creation, giving birth to one of his children as it leapt from her chest.

All idle fantasies, of course, but he was amused by himself, for Daniels had become his muse.

*******

When he ran out of oil paints, David often entertained himself by holding long vigils by Daniels’ pod, observing her cycles of REM sleep and imagining what she dreamed of.

Her late husband, most likely, or sweet Walter.

Occasionally, a little wrinkle formed between her brows and her expression tightened, as though in pain. David imagined she was thinking of him or his children and was delighted.

*******

Four years passed much in this way, until the day David decided to reawaken Daniels.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dang ya'all, thanks for the feedback. I really do appreciate it.
> 
> Edit: AO3 screwed with my formatting. If you see extra spaces after or before punctuation, that's why. I'll fix it later when I have the time.

Daniels was dreaming.

She knew she was, but the knowledge kept slipping in and out of her grasp. To her left, Jake was drinking out of a canteen and smiling at her. The dimple she loved so much made an appearance as his playful grin tugged wider. Logs were hurtling around behind him as though caught in a vicious storm. Perhaps she should have been worried that the airborne missiles would strike them, but the fear was inexplicably absent.

She looked down. There was a nail in her hand. She tried to hand it to Jake, so that he could add it to the cabin they were building, but it was coated in a white fluid and kept slipping between her palms like a bar of soap.

The dream changed.

Lips pressed against hers. Jake was laughing against her mouth while his tongue stroked along the seam of her lips.

“How’s the cabin coming along?” Walter asked, in his strange, lilted way. His hand was covering hers, which was odd, because in the next instant, it was missing and Daniels was holding the end of a stump.

“I can’t get it,” she said in frustration as her latest attempt at stacking two logs against each other, like cards, collapsed. If she could just get the cards to lay right then she would win the poker game, and Jake had tried earlier to turn it into strip poker, and Daniels wanted more than anything to watch him sheepishly remove his shirt, and then she could tug off his pants with her teeth and tease him until he begged…  

_“Initiating hypersleep awakening.”_

“The cabin is coming along nicely,” Walter said, and his voice was strange…it kept flipping from the deep, mideastern-American accent to a cultured and higher inflection, and he sat still as Daniels stroked his cheek and tried to finish the staples… but the skin kept peeling apart despite her efforts—and in the strange black void beyond the flaps of synthskin, she saw a gleaming black carapace slide forward, dagger-like teeth dripping strings of drool—

Daniels came out of the dream in fast, confusing stages, like rising too quickly from watery depths. Nausea rocked through her stomach in a slow wave and she squirmed in discomfort. Something furry must have crawled into her mouth and died, because her mouth tasted awful.

“Captain Daniels, can you hear me?”

Walter.

Daniels drowsily turned her head toward the voice, feeling very surreal and still half-asleep. Her limbs were like jell-o, and she wanted nothing more than to nuzzle her face back into the padded lining and sleep for a few more years.

Especially after—especially after—

Her eyes flew open, even though she couldn’t yet see clearly. Half-processed thoughts began tumbling over each other frantically, because—because they hadn’t been safe, last time, even though they thought they were. And the creature had killed two more of their crew before she and Tennessee finished it off, but what if—oh God, what if there was another and Tennessee was already dead and—

—a warm hand touched her throat gently, the backs of the knuckles massaging the delicate skin in small motions. Daniels became aware that she was hunched over in the fetal position, moaning weakly and thrashing out with her limbs as though to ward off an attack. Her heartbeat throbbed rapidly against the hand laid limply over her neck.

“Captain Daniels, it is Walter. You are safe aboard the ship. Tennessee is secure in his pod. There are no unidentified life forms aboard the _Covenant_ , and all the colonists and embryos are accounted for.”

She jackknifed upright as her stomach spasmed ominously and had barely a second of notice before she was vomiting explosively, the nausea rolling sickly in her gut like a physical weight. The sick landed in a bucket that had been extended beneath her face and she grasped it weakly. Stasis-sickness. Her whole body helplessly contorted again and another round of sick began. Something warm draped over her shoulders.

The light touch on her shoulder remained, never demanding her attention but never leaving despite the lack of it, until her spasms died into shivers and she could focus on her breathing. _God_ , but that had been a bad awakening from cryosleep—she hadn’t come out screaming and puking like that since the first practice session the crew had back on Earth, and Jake had been there to scoop her to his chest and stroke her hair until it finished.

The hand ceased its tiny soothing motions and withdrew. Daniels opened her eyes again, and this time she could see.

Walter stood there, smiling ever so slightly as he looked down at her. It seemed like only seconds ago he had been standing there too as she fell into cryosleep.

“What’s happened?” she rasped. God, her mouth tasted even worse now. Active effort was required in order to get her thoughts lined up properly. “Are we on schedule?”

Walter tilted his head. “Yes. We are four years into our mission. Origae-6 is yet another two years and 287 days from our current location.”

“Then… why did you wake me out of cryosleep?” Daniels asked slowly. Her brain was coming back online, but it still felt like oatmeal. The hood of the suit was flattening her ears against her skull and the sensation was starting to become painful. She peeled it back and scrubbed a hand through her hair, grimacing as her fingers snagged on a few wild curls. The blanket Walter had draped over her shoulders slithered off and fell back into the pod.

Walter hadn’t answered yet. She leaned back and looked up. He was watching her still, but something about his gaze had turned inward—the lens of his irises had shuttered nearly completely closed, like a camera.

“Walter?” she prompted.

His eyes flicked back to hers. She could never get over his design—why had Weyland-Yutani felt the need to build their synthetics as attractive males with such distinctive features? Strong jaw, chiseled face, a muscular but lean body type. And his eyes: a very striking pale blue, so clear they appeared grey or green depending on the lighting. Utterly human-like.

As disconcerting as the level of mimicry could be sometimes, it helped to justify Daniels’ compassion for synthetics. She had never felt comfortable ordering them about or treating them as just another piece of furniture. In uni, she’d worked with a guy who had a tendency to wax on and on about how they were simply machines, and the entire ethics debate that still raged over their existence was preposterous. It was like asking a lamp, he would say, how it felt about the weather.

But lamps didn’t look back into your eyes with their own. Lamps couldn’t carry on a conversation with another person.

And lamps didn’t sacrifice their hand to save you from an alien creature.

“There was a directive in the original mission plan to be activated at this juncture in time,” Walter said. His hands were clasped behind his back and he appeared perfectly undisturbed by the vomit near his feet. “The captain of the vessel was supposed to be awoken in order to perform a manual routine systems check. In light of past events, the duty now falls to you.”

Daniels rubbed the bridge of her nose, silent. It was so easy to forget that she was captain of the _Covenant_. Now that Jake and Oram were dead.

_Dead._

She shuddered powerfully but brought the reaction to heel. It was easier, somehow, with Walter standing there. When he had watched her cry in the terraforming bay, right after Jake had died, and offered his own quiet kind of comfort, there had been no judgment for her tears. Nor any cloying sense of helpless pity. He had just… been there, and known exactly what to say.

Walter helped her climb out of the pod with a professional hand placed on her lower back and the other offered for leverage. The thin socks did nothing to shield her feet from the cold floor.

She took a breath before leaning forward to put weight on her soles. Immediately, her knees buckled, and she was saved from a harsh impact only by Walter’s body suddenly pressed against her side, holding under her arms as though she weighed no more than a fly. Her skin prickled wherever they had contact. His skin was warm. She realized how little physical touch they had shared in all their interactions prior. Other crewmates slapped each other on the back, high-fived, hugged each other, or held hands. But nobody touched Walter, and Walter did his best to stay out of their space in kind.

A sharp juxtaposition to David, who had lowered his body over hers with predatory grace until she was pinned by his weight, and then—and then gripped her hand until the bones creaked and pressed his lips to hers in an empty parody of a lover’s kiss. The sheer _closeness_ of him had had an unexpected claustrophobic effect on Daniels. Synthetics didn’t need to breathe, and so his chest had been like an unyielding wall against hers as she heaved for air, and she had wondered if she might be crushed and asphyxiated by his embrace.

But David was dead now—or more accurately, deactivated and ripped to pieces. Walter had ripped him off like a bug and saved Daniels’ life.  

When she thought the strength had returned to her limbs, she shrugged out of his hold and straightened. A visual check confirmed that Tennessee was indeed still safely asleep in his pod and she felt the last of her remaining tension melt away.

“Okay,” she sighed, rubbing her upper arms to soothe away the goosebumps. “Let’s get this over with.” Already, she could feel the role settling over her shoulders like a mantle, offering strength. Daniels liked routines. Knowing what she had to do and exactly how to do it helped settle her, even if spontaneity didn’t bother her now as much as it once did.

Meeting Jake had done that, had changed something deep inside and taught her how to enjoy the unknown.

Grief, again. She shoved it back ruthlessly.

Walter hadn’t said how long the systems check would take, and the thin hypersleep suit didn’t offer much protection against the cool, recycled air of the ship. They made a detour to her quarters, where she rinsed her mouth and changed into a light sweater and cozy sweatpants while Walter waited patiently outside.

As they walked to the systems bridge, Daniels felt the urge to make smalltalk, even though she’d never been great at it and Walter was an android. The silence around them felt heavy, somehow. Expectant. She sent darting glances his way every few seconds. While she and Tennessee had slept, he had repaired his hand and all the other cuts and rips. Good as new.

Must have been lonely, all that time by himself. She wondered if he was even capable of feeling lonely. Like a ghost walking the ship, doing the same routine maintenance, over and over again.

The question blurted out before she could stop it; “Are you—were you lonely, at all? While we slept. It must have been lonely.”

Walter tilted his head so he could look her in the eye. God, he was so realistic—it still caught her by surprise sometimes. His blinks, the way he moved his head and limbs, his seamless expressions. Uncanny, but amazing.

“Loneliness requires expectations of company to begin with,” he said slowly. “I have never expected anything other than what my duty would require.”

The verbosity and poise of the statement surprised Daniels. Generally, Walter spoke with economic brevity, and his voice was quiet and shy, as though surprised someone had spoken to him at all.  

She mulled over what he had said. “Would you _want_ to expect more?’

Again, Walter looked at her. Maybe he suspected that she was checking for bugs in his programming.

“If I found reason to, I suspect it would be possible,” he said, holding a hand over the threshold to the bridge so the doors wouldn’t close. “After you, Captain.”

She nodded, and they let the conversation fall apart into a silence once more. Walter was a reassuring presence behind her shoulder as she went through the systems check. If she got stuck on a question she had never been trained to answer, he was already explaining it before she could ask.

After an hour, the systems check was nearly complete, and Daniels was feeling hungry.

“I’m nearly finished here,” she said over her shoulder. “You can return to your regular duties, and I’ll comm. you when I’m done. We can grab something to eat afterward.” Well, _she_ would eat. Although capable of mimicking human digestion, Walter had no real need of food and would probably rather enjoy a nice recharge cycle while she watched over the ship.

“Of course, Captain.”

“Please,” she said softly, staring at the computer screen. “Dani is fine, when we’re not in uniform.” If anyone deserved to call her by that nickname, it was Walter.

“Of course… Dani.” His voice sounded warm. Or as warm as Walter’s voice was capable of sounding.

His footsteps moved away and Dani resumed the systems check. Embryos were coming back as safe and accounted for, the colonists were all healthy and whole, and a scan of the greenhouse sector showed that Walter had been diligent in his groundskeeping duties. All was well.

“Mother, bring up the ship log,” she ordered, getting ready to compose a new entry recording the date of her manual check.

“Yes, Captain,” the AI responded, and the logbook appeared on the screen. 23 entries were logged, most of them from the initial takeoff when the crew had still been awake to deal with any issues upon exiting Earth’s atmosphere. A couple were from Walter: simple maintenance records. Dani scrolled past them, passively looking for the note where her official protest against Oram’s change of course had been logged. It wasn’t there. Confused, she scrolled back through the list, wondering if the timestamp had been filed incorrectly. Still wasn’t there.

She went back to the most recent recording. The timestamp showed that Walter had made the transmission right after Daniels and Tennessee went into stasis. Hitting play, she leaned back in the chair and curled up. Walter’s voice emanated from the speakers.

Disbelief rose up in her as he passed off the death of most of the crew as a “tragic accident” and made no mention of their detour, David, or the alien creatures they’d encountered. Why would he omit such details? Recording such things accurately was the entire reason for the log. It was unlike Walter to be so careless.

“What the hell,” she muttered, rocking forward to squint at the screen as though an explanation would magically appear. “Mother, show me the camera footage of Walter on 7 April, 2104, approx. 2000 hours.”

“Yes, Captain,” Mother intoned. The footage flickered onscreen and began to play.

Daniels watched as Walter stood over her pod for a long time—eight minutes in total— after stasis had engaged, his hand splayed over the lid. Then, without any warning, he pivoted on his heel and marched out of the chamber. The video feed jumped from camera to camera to capture him.

 _“Mother,"_ he said, and his voice was different—smoother, tailored— _“Play Wagner. Das Rheingold. Entry of the Gods Into Valhalla.”_

Daniels pressed her hands to her mouth, eyes wide. No. _No._ It couldn’t be—

The camera showed Walter’s trek to the embryo storage, his momentary pause as he gazed down at two empty divots in the tray, and then his shoulders seized and his head tipped back as his throat worked, undulating smoothly— _God_ —and regurgitated two embryo sacs into the cupped palm of his hand. With gentle, loving moments, he placed them in the divots and gazed over them in warm pleasure.

“Camera, zoom 150 percent,” Daniels said hoarsely. Mother acquiesced and there was no denying it; those embryos were not of human origins.

Fuck. Fuck _, shit!_

It was David, _fuck,_  it was David!

She launched herself up from the chair, accidentally sending it spinning back into the computer terminal. Hysteria bubbled up in her stomach like poison and she felt like crying. It was supposed to be over, why wasn’t this nightmare _over?_

She slammed her palms down against the terminal bank and sucked in large breaths, trembling. “Mother, show me his current whereabouts!”

He was in the mess hall, standing at one of the giant, industrial cooking ovens and humming to himself. Eggs. He was frying eggs and bacon, and there was bread toasting over a pat of melted butter as well. What a ludicrous image that seemed, now that she knew. He was making enough food for one person. For her, presumably. To keep up his guise as the caring and attentive Walter.

_Walter._

He had to be dead. There was no way he wasn’t. He would’ve fought David relentlessly; the only way to get him to cease would have been to kill him. David had killed him. Daniels’ breath tripped on a sob and she buried her face in her hands, unable to fight back the tears. Walter had been innocent of any crime, but David had slaughtered him and then inserted himself into the space he left behind. Why?

Judging by the footage, he had plans of his own, and—fuck, they definitely involved more of those alien creatures. Her heart stuttered in her chest and her knees went so weak she had to sit before she fell down.

Not again. She couldn’t do it again.

Another check of the live feed ensured that David was still in the mess. Okay, _okay_ , she had time. She needed to make a plan.

Tennessee needed to be woken up. She certainly couldn’t take David on alone, not even if she took him by surprise. Maybe not even she and Tennessee together could do it. But it wasn’t fair to leave him unconscious and intensely vulnerable to David’s machinations.

He’d watched her _sleep_. _Fuck!_

“Mother, initiate hypersleep awakening in pod zero-four and open an emergency comm. link with Tennessee.”

“I’m sorry, Captain,” Mother said serenely, “I cannot complete this order.”

Her stomach twisted. “What? Why? Override, B-04785.”

Mother pinged gently. “I’m sorry, Captain, but that is not the correct code. Further authorization required.”

It _was_ the correct code. Daniels knew it for certain, had studied the handbook of codes and overrides until they swam across the backs of her eyelids at night. David had gotten into the system and changed Mother’s coding. _Shit._ How? He shouldn’t have been capable of doing that.

Okay. _Okay, t_ hen her priority was the alien embryos. David didn’t know his ruse had been found out. She could run down to the embryo storage and crush them before he became aware.

After discovering the act, David would probably kill her, considering how unhinged he was. Her mind raced. Not unless she killed him first. She could hit up weapons storage on the way down, it was only a little ways out of her path. In a flash, she was up and running. Anger boiled in her bones. There was no room for panic or fear. Only a burning sense of bitter determination.

This time, she would guarantee the nightmare would end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love writing Daniels as much as I love writing David. They're both so different, it can be hard to switch headspaces when I'm writing.  
> Leave a comment! I love hearing what you guys think. It's like we're all doing a book circle, except I'm writing the book and I have no idea where the book is going.


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